People depend on organization for their well being, and genuine interdependence is the essential component of freedom. That genuine interdependence that generates independence is genuine community, and real community is currently so undermined that it is nowhere effective enough to generate independence. In real community, people work with each other for their greater good. I have written out the composition of community well enough in my essay at this blog, What is Community?, and in the DESO manuscript to make that known. (The link for purchasing the book, and its E-Book, is included below.)

The point is that most people are damaged by the systems of control that weave together the socioeconomic organizations of mass centralized society, MCS; the same systems that people depend on for sustenance have brought destruction and ruin to all but the few.

And, few people understand that conformity to hierarchical, command systems does not unity create, but just the opposite. Rather than mutual interdependence, which is a structural challenge, and it would generate the independence people need …hierarchical, command systems make dependents of their members, not dependent on each other, but dependent on the systems of control that alienate them from themselves and from each other; fully explained in the manuscript.

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My wife, Maria, and I purchase what we need. We depend on impersonal systems of production and distribution that we have no personal hand in whatsoever. We are something like infants in that regard.

The access to goods and services in this society is with money. Human needs are met through production from profit-based society. Profit-based mentality is what drives people away from each other. They are not mutually interdependent in the manner of real community, production-based community, but view each other as stepping stones to greater profit.

We need only witness how so many people just don’t have the money to have their natural needs met. To blame poverty on the poor is callous and stupid. The structures of society determine the outcome of life for its members.

If one views all children as having equal value and equal potential, as well we should; then, it is self-evident that prevailing socioeconomics have failed the preponderances of their members. Preponderances are the gauge of measure, not what the few have attained from life, but rather what the vaster populations have attained from it. Failure to tend to the needs of the least of these has been the failure of our society, not because children are somehow born deficient, but because the society that most children are born into thwarts their growth. It is not the place of any one nation’s oppressors to be smug with the notion that, perhaps, many of their members seem better off than the members of other nations. No, rather, the view of humanism is that all children are born to grow and to develop their innate potentials, which is possible …given real community support.

The society bent on domination, and its use of people for the ends of the few, is the cowardly way to meet the challenges of life that must be met, and it leaves most children without; insanity, poverty, and war. Mental illness is what happens when people don’t work with each other for their humane, mutual benefit. But, the only place where people can do that is in the context of real community, and that, our friends, is the structural challenge that we must meet. The structures of genuine, eclectic community are so little known that my father’s structural creations are, from what I’ve seen, the only plans broad enough to meet that challenge.

A Brief Sketch of Decentralized Economic Social Organization, DESO,

Its Structures and Their Objectives

The idea is that changing people, one person at a time, will not change the fundamental socioeconomic structures of our mass centralized society, MCS. MCS monetized structures are designed to fail. Internal reforms can not change that self-destructive momentum, which conundrum is explained in the DESO manuscript. But, unlike other writers who have observed the same …DESO provides a doable solution that people can use to build a humane society!

People can design a better socioeconomic organization; an independent one that can meet the real needs of its members. The full DESO structuring is no more complicated than the production of a feature length movie; meaning, that it’s well within our capacity to actualize. And, from the outset, its creation is socially enriching and simple for people to bring into reality. Even though the full explanation requires more space than this brief overview provides. I will do here what I can to provide you with the beginnings of the DESO vision. And, keep in mind that the manuscript is now available through Xlibris: http://reedckinney.com/

I created the terms that represent real functions in DESO community.

One group of three to five mutualistic families, a mutual voting block, MVB, has one vote. DESO communities are composed of MVB. Each MVB is self-reliant, while the privacy of each nuclear family of each MVB is guaranteed. Dialogical (meaning dialogue) decision making is essential for civic-economic organization to function. The MVB are coordinated by their community coordinating committee, CCC. The CCC does not have executive power. The executive power is shared equally among the mutual voting blocks, MVB. This is a structural challenge which is met in DESO. The community coordinating committee, CCC, enables the MVB to propose, approve, finance, and actualize community actions.

Civic-economic organization is designed to produce the guaranteed minimum standard of service, GMSS, which assures human dignity among members. All subsistence needs, including health service, education, and free financing, are provided by the community for community members. This is economically generative, because members who work among the participatory (structured self-management among all members) public productive enterprises, Pub. P. E., earn generous compensation. This is a structural challenge which is met by DESO.

Education is participatory, and is experienced through all the Arts. The DESO theory of education is elaborated in the manuscript. For the young people reaching the stage of independent ego formation, between ages of twelve through fifteen, at their discretion, integration into all civil participation is open to them. Each public productive enterprise, Pub. P. E., includes an office of the educational organization, so all “hands on” learning among the young, who participate in these production centers, is part of their pragmatic, educational experience. The young are, likewise, compensated for their contributions.

Pub. P. E. includes food production, processing, storage, and distribution, intermediate industrial production, water and sanitation, renewable energy, construction, fabric production facilities, health care, the educational department, the community personnel office, its department of public safety, and the mutual community bank, MCB.

The MCB is linked to the community coordinating committee, CCC, as are all Pub. P. E.. The MCB manages both private and public community accounts. MCB organization is complete and can not be elaborated fully in this brief overview. Nonetheless, the MCB is modeled after JAK interest free banking of Sweden, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAK_Members_Bank

And, the mutual community bank, MCB, uses both …money from the central bank, the Federal Reserve System – conventional money – andCommunity Autonomous Money, CAM. CAM value is based on its “work value,” which is explained in the manuscript.

In brief, the MCB is community owned and managed. Community members’ public and private productive enterprises are capitalized without interest charges. Free capitalization, which includes community autonomous money,CAM, grants enables wider community production, which in turn widens community and inter-community infrastructures. Ever-growing DESO infrastructures strengthen CAM and its applications become wider. CAM is structured so that its use generates cash reserves in the mutual community bank, MCB. The needed elaboration of these ideas is in the DESO manuscript.

DESO is a genuine civil culture, a genuine high civilization. Individuated people develop with education through art – art is inherent in science. Dialogical-based, consensus-based community decision making processes do not function unless members are individuated people. Its guaranteed minimum standard of service, GMSS, is for all members and protects human dignity. At first glance, those terms may not raise associations in your mind; the reason being that the structures of decentralized economic social organization, DESO, are purposefully designed to foster mental health, which involves the community support needed for the individuated evolution of each member. This contrasts markedly with mass centralized society, MCS – the absence of community – which requires a materialistic, consumer-based mentality, which consumer-based mentality drives people away from each other. MCS is not designed to meet the needs of human growth, while DESO is.

Networks of production-based, semi-self-sufficient, sovereign DESO communities strive for independence from MCS. Each community is a place where people’s values, the choices people make regarding their manner of life, are tested in genuine, participatory community. The civic-economic organization is participatory. Through genuine, structured, dialogical decision making processes, people decide together how best to meet their real human needs, while affording themselves the needed resources, in conjunction with their concerted efforts, to do just that.

The test of civilization is whether or not it provides its members with the support they need to grow …that each member exercises and expands her unique, innate talents in conjunction with skills attainment. That natural impetus to grow requires support. And, since individuated growth is meaningful in the context of mutualistic community, then, the individuation of each member is the purpose of that mutualism.

Real interdependence, real community, is the natural environment of people who defend their freedom to have personal control over their private, productive lives. The prerequisite for that is a society structured to meet that need for all of its members.

DESO objectives include the happy unfolding of self-development among all children, as well as among all adult members. This is only possible where power is shared equally. DESO community organization is structured to support and to actualize the concerted efforts of its members. Self-management in DESO means that the members of each sovereign community determine among themselves how to best invest their community resources …which grow continually within their self-sustaining, self-regulated, non-coercive economy. Its purpose is full mental health for all – the heartfelt satisfactions of real human growth – happiness. ….DESO is more than that vision, it provides organizational designs people can use to make it reality.